It was the trade deadline that was nearly D.O.A. Besides the last-minute deal that sent Evan Turner from Philadelphia to Indiana, it was mostly a day of high-profile inactivity. There have been minute-long slug races that produced more movement. Pau Gasol, Rajon Rondo and Harrison Barnes all remained with their respective teams. Only two former All-Stars - Danny Granger and Antawn Jamison - changed addresses, and their heydays came last decade. Theories abounded as to what caused the inertia.

"12 Years a Slave," director Steve McQueen's harrowing depiction of slavery in America, won top motion picture honors at the 45th NAACP Image Awards on Saturday evening at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Lupita Nyong'o won in the supporting actress category for her role in "12 Years," and in a separate ceremony Friday evening, McQueen won the Image Award for director and John Ridley for the film's screenplay. By beating "Lee Daniels' the Butler" and "Fruitvale Station," among others, in the motion picture category, "12 Years a Slave" heads into the Academy Awards on March 2 with yet more honors.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Drivers hardly needed another reason to win NASCAR's Daytona 500 because it's stock-car racing's most prestigious race. NASCAR gave them one anyway. The 56th running of the Daytona 500 on Sunday will be the first race under new rules that place more emphasis on drivers winning races and less on merely collecting points to reach NASCAR's Chase for the Cup championship playoff in the fall. The changes mean that if a driver wins one of the 26 regular-season races in the Sprint Cup Series, starting with the season-opening Daytona 500, he or she virtually is guaranteed a berth in the 10-race Chase.

The wait continued early Friday for the winner of the Powerball jackpot worth $425.3 million to come forward after having bought the ticket at a Bay Area gas station. The winner has up to a year to claim the prize, but state lottery spokesman Alex Traverso said people generally turn their ticket in within a week. "I give the person the first day to be shocked," Traverso said on Thursday, "and then the wheels start turning. " Wednesday's winning ticket sold at a Chevron gas station in the city of Milpitas was the only one in the nation to match all six numbers.

SOCHI, Russia -- Was the late Sarah Burke the real winner of the women's halfpipe Thursday night? Twenty-year-old Maddie Bowman of South Lake Tahoe, Calif., didn't hesitate when asked that question on the night she won the gold medal in the first women's free ski halfpipe event at the Olympics. "I would absolutely say that. Sarah's inspired us on snow and off snow,” Bowman said. “I think she would have been very proud of how all the girls rode tonight. "I sure hope I and everyone else made her proud because we would not be here without her. " Burke, of Canada, was one of the leaders in the push to get the freestyle skiing events into the Olympics.

For the second time in a month, a winning lottery ticket worth hundreds of millions was purchased in Northern California. But this time, the lucky player won't have to share the jackpot. A Powerball ticket purchased at a Chevron gas station in the Bay Area city of Milpitas was the only one in the country to match all six numbers and is worth $425.3 million, state lottery officials said. There also were two tickets purchased in California that matched five of the six winning numbers, each worth about $1.4 million each.

Now the waiting game begins. Someone, somewhere, purchased a Powerball ticket in Milpitas, Calif., that will pay out around $425.3 million. That person has up to a year to claim the prize, but California Lottery spokesman Alex Traverso said usually winners of a prize this large will claim their money within a week. He had a message Thursday for the winner: “Set your mind at ease, sign the back of the ticket, go to our East Bay office,” Traverso said. “Let us handle all the details of your press conference.” California Lottery jackpot winners are not required to hold a news conference, he said, “but it will make this person's life easier if they handle all this media at once.” Only six states allow winners to be anonymous.

There's at least one California winner in Wednesday night's $400-million Powerball jackpot drawing, state Lottery officials said. A winning ticket that matched all six numbers was purchased in the Northern California city of Milpitas, said California Lottery spokesman Alex Traverso. He told The Times final results would not be available until late Wednesday night. The winning Powerball numbers announced Wednesday night were 17, 49, 54, 35 and 1, and the Powerball was 34, according to the Multi-State Lottery Assn . The $400-million jackpot was the sixth-largest in U.S. lottery history, and the odds of winning it were about 1 in 175 million, officials said.

U.S. Olympic figure skater Jason Brown won a bronze medal at Sochi, but his hair was a winner too: The ponytail got its own Twitter account, @2014PonyPower, with about 4,000 followers, People magazine reports. [People] Speaking of the Olympics, former skating champion Johnny Weir, who is serving as an NBC commentator during the Sochi Games, is getting a lot of attention for his flamboyant style, which he hasn't toned down at all -- "Putin-defying openness," Los Angeles Times writer Bill Plaschke calls it. But Weir tells Plaschke he isn't being defiant, he's just being himself.